Better late than never!

I just found out from my friend Kristy at the Columbus Dispatch that my column, which many of you were aware was slated to run last Thursday, but had to be rescheduled, ran in yesterday's newspaper (she herself didn't find out until after work was over)!

Much props to my best friend Megan for finding the link for me-- you can check out the column here. I would like to state for the record, though, that in the paper, this column ran right next to a big article on Snakes on a Plane, which makes me super, super proud. (Really!)

The big mass e-mail will be sweeping the nation in a few hours, so I apologize to those of you who are on that list-- but just think, when it arrives, you can always say, "I found out about it hours ago, on her blog." Meaning that my blog will finally have been good for something.

Euclid Loves Ricky

On a routine trip to the Euclid library (which, in a bit of trivia that might interest those of you who are local, is apparently considered the third best library in the nation-- I highly recommend it), I decided to peruse the CD collection, expecting to find the usual libraryesque selections-- Pavarotti, Joni Mitchell, and a random Wilco album from 1993.

So I was shocked to find an entire rack dedicated to Ricky Martin, including no less than seven copies (seven!!) of his Spanish-language album Vuelve, an album of which I believed I owned the only copy (please, do not even question why I would own a copy of this. I bought it to impress a guy, and it didn't occur to me until much later that a guy that would be impressed that I owned Vuelve might not be interested in me).

My question is, why would the Euclid library believe that seven different patrons would come in within two weeks of each other, just really wanting to hear "Por Arriba Por Abajo"? And that only counts the ones that were actually on the shelves-- what if there are, like, seven more copies of Vuelve out there, already checked out to happy Ricky Martin fans?

And there were tons of other Ricky Martin selections, as well-- Livin' La Vida Loca, that one that has "She Bangs" on it, et. al. Why? I would have investigated further, but someone was hovering around near me, clearly wanting to get a look at the Ricky Martin rack. And I didn't want to hog the Vuelve. Whatever that means.

Baby's first salad

Behold! I made a salad!

Having never actually made a salad before in my entire life (more on this in a moment), I obviously also made a really big mess. And no, there is no Febreze in my salad. But the point is, I did it-- I personally assembled a salad with more than five ingredients, for the sole purpose of my consumption at lunch tomorrow. Since I figured that no one would believe me (particularly Ashley, with whom I was on the phone during the assemblage of said salad), I thought I would photograph my triumph, even though it reveals the embarrassing fact that, as I did not know how to properly toss the salad, I just transferred it to a bigger container and shook it up and transferred it back.

Those of you who are relatively new to this blog will not realize the significance of this event, and walk away shaking your head, oddly vexed by my salad retardation.

But those of you who have known me for awhile, I hope you appreciate the sheer magnitude of this situation. I made a salad. And I'm going to eat it. Unless I panic, throw it out, and go to Long John Silver's. But I'm hoping Healthy Kim prevails. Especially since this salad took me like 20 minutes to make.

Dear Euclid Neighbors,

Why do you keep throwing rib bones into the grass around the school across the street from my house? Why? Why are you even eating so many ribs? I swear on all that is holy, I probably haven't eaten ribs in seven or eight years. Not one rib. And yet, somehow, you're all eating them like they're going out of style, and the unceremoniously throwing them into the lawn in front of the school (which means you also often eat outdoors, which is again weird, as I never actually see any of you eating outdoors, and I'm out there quite a bit. Are you throwing them from your car? Are you eating ribs in a moving car??).

Don't you understand that every time my dog finds one of these discarded rib bones, she has to pick it up and eat it-- I don't mean chew on it, I mean she eats the entire thing, and it makes sickening crunching noises, and I just can't stop thinking, my dog is eating something one of the neighbors already chewed on.

So please, please, please, please please stop doing it. There are enough obstacles on my morning walk-- renegade poo bombs, mysteriously dead-of-apparently-natural-causes squirrel carcasses in the middle of the sidewalk, kids who set fire to things in the school parking lot-- that I don't need your rib bones adding just that much more evil to my day.

Love,
Kim

Wish I was there

I'm back from vacation! I always feel awkward that first day back from vacation, when everyone asks about it, because I feel pressured to give a detailed blow-by-blow account of the trip, when people really only want to hear that it was "really fun."

So here, in a nutshell, were the highlights (and not-so-highlights) of my vacation.

1. It was very pirate-themed, as you can see from this picture-- which, by the way, if you show anyone this picture of me in a bathing suit and/or comment about the sad state of my thighs, I'll kill you. Most of our free time was spent scouring the boardwalk for pirate-themed souvenirs and accoutrements for our pirate outfits.

2. The sunset cruise, long a staple of the Shable family Rehoboth Beach vacation, was cancelled due to the escalating price of gasoline, thus only deepening my insane obsession the price of gas.

3. I got a killer tan, although it is not evident in this picture. But trust me, it's TOTALLY killer.

4. I got buried in the sand, which is much scarier and more claustrophobic than carefree parental nostalgia make it appear to be. However, once you get used to it, it's really quite cozy, to the point where I only eventually got up because I had to pee, and there was sand in my butt.

5. Ben and I got whistled at by the lifeguard, and-- here is a little known fact about me, I have an insane fear of lifeguards. I always have, ever since my dad started taking me to Geauga Lake when I was little and they would point ominously into the water in my general direction and blow their whistles in a threatening manner. Even though my best friend Megan and I were once actually rescued from certain death-by-smashing-into-a-jetty by a very nice lifeguard, I still totally fear them. So when this lifeguard whistled at us, I panicked, which caused a series of waves to break right on top of me, once again filling my swimsuit with sand and retiring me to the beach for a short while.

All in all, my vacation was "really fun," and I really wish it were still going on right now. But still, a vacation isn't a vacation if you never have to go back to work. But seriously? That's bullshit, I just want to be on vacation forever.

Staredown

Having just encountered a strange guy in the stairwell on my sixth trip to the bathroom today (I have purposefully been chugging large amounts of water in an effort to take many bathroom trips and thus make the day go faster), I realized that I very rarely look people in the eye if I don’t really know them. I don’t know if this is like alpha dog—or, no, that’s not right, what’s less than alpha dog, beta dog?—behavior, because I know that, as the alpha dog, you’re always supposed to stare down your adversary in an effort to show dominance—but I totally can’t do it.

This once got me into trouble at the day spa, when one day I was feeling shifty and would not look my boss in the eye, and she called me on it. “Is something wrong? What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you look me in the eye? Did you do something wrong?” Which I hadn’t, but as she began badgering me, I really couldn’t look her in the eye, which caused her to spend the rest of the day monitoring me with (from what I could see out of the corner of my eye) an extremely suspicious look on her face.

My favorite part of that story is that she asked me, “Did you do something wrong?” Which is totally what I ask the dog when I think she’s peed on the carpet.

Summer lovin'

As I ready myself for vacation, I find myself finally getting into the swing of summer, which is sad, because according to all the stores around here, it is now Back To School Time, and I need to purchase my Trapper Keeper posthaste, lest it suddenly morph into Halloween.

So in an effort to maintain that summer groove, I thought I'd give shout-outs to the things that have received much props from your homey this summer:

1. Cherikee Red Pop. The world's most racist soda! And yet, so very tasty... I was first introduced to Cherikee Red at Camp Hidden Hollow, where the Aurora High School Marching Band held its band camp. Cherikee Red was the only thing that made skit day bearable...

2. David Hasselhoff's "Jump In My Car" video (see below). Okay, at first I thought it was funny, but now I get it stuck in my head sometimes, like at work, which is really embarrassing. But Evil Ejector KITT is so hard to resist! I wonder how many other ladies he has seduced in this manner...

3. The return of Flavor of Love on VH1! This evening, at 10/9 Central. Watch it! Watch it or perish! Because no one watched it last time, and that left me with no one to discuss The Great Pumpkin Spitting Incident, or to quote Goldie-isms to. So please watch, so that we can have long, spirited discussions about it. Also, according to the promo I watched (multiple) times yesterday, someone is going to crap on Flav's floor during this episode. How can you resist?

4. Snap peas. They're delicious AND nutricious! Really, I like them. It's a whole new me!

So check these things out and indulge yourself for once! In the meantime, I'm going to be putting the finishing touches on my Tiny Toiletry collection (I acquired the Tiny Gel and Tiny Shave Cream I needed on Friday!), praying I can learn how to upload video content from the video camera my parents lent me (if ANYONE has any idea how I can upload from a PV-GS9, PLEASE let me know, as I am now desperate to memorialize every second of my two upcoming vacations, as well as several weddings and hilarious cuteness between the dog and cat), and doing many crunches and leg lifts in a feeble attempt to not look like I am wearing a fanny pack under my swimsuit. We're leaving Tuesday, so I may be going dark for the week, although I'm secretly hoping that the hotel has wireless access... because yes, I am depraved and sad like that.

I'm unsure

I apologize for the lack of blogging over the last few days-- Ben and I are leaving for Rehoboth Beach, DE, in a few days for our first official vacation, and I am busy alternately fantasizing about how romantic it is going to be and obsessing over the fact that I have not yet assembled a complete set of travel-sized toiletries to carry me through the four-day trek.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post this video I shot while attempting to figure out if Ben's camera phone really could shoot video, as promised (turns out it can, and here it is, for your entertainment!).

A lot like hate (or at least strong dislike)

So last week, in Pittsburgh, Ben and I returned to our hotel room early and decided to watch a movie. Sadly, the only movie we could find (that we didn't have to pay for, and that didn't feature full-scale nudity) was the Ashton Kutcher/Amanda Peet classic A Lot Like Love, an annoyingly drawn out love story with many things wrong with it, such as:

1. The fact that it stars Ashton Kutcher
2. The fact that it stars Amanda Peet
3. The fact that it is an annoyingly drawn out love story.

Really, it's number three that really gets me (although I really do harbor a likely unhealthy dislike of both these stars, particularly Amanda Peet, who needs to learn that being naked in a movie does not make you an artiste). In his book Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman goes into a digression about how all people just have movie archetypes that they truly cannot stand-- he, for example, hates "nobody believes me" type movies, where people's wives are kidnapped and no one will help them. And I, it turns out, simply cannot stand movies where couples get together, break up, get together, break up, get together, are suddenly separated by 1,000 miles and changing life views, get together briefly again, break up this time seemingly for good, and then, desperately, at the last moment, get back together again, one can only assume forever, but given their past, it might be unlikely.

I realize that this is the plot of almost all romantic comedies; this is why I avoid them. While I understand that it would really be pretty boring to watch a movie where a couple just hits it off right away and never breaks up, only having minor squabbles about who walks the dog more often, it would also be much more realistic, and waste a lot less time-- if we know they're going to get together in the end, why prolong it with a series of tortured montages set to Ryan Adams music of them staring out the window moodily?

But this whole rant is not really about why I hate romantic comedies-- it is more to find out what movie archetype makes you insane. For instance, Ashley has told me that she really hates movies that in any way involve the apocalypse or any type of post-apocalyptic world, such as Waterworld, The Postman, or pretty much any other Kevin Costner movies (themselves a sign of the apocalypse).

So doooo tell-- I'm fascinated by this whole concept. Your least favorite movie archetype-- spill it.

The Hoff Spits Game

Much thanks to Pete for bringing this, the world's most heinous and terrifying video ever, to my attention. Between the air guitaring, the dancing (with thumbs! Like Elaine!), the Power Point-looking green screen backgrounds, and the fact that he appears to be kidnapping at least one of the amateur porn stars that make up his unwilling female entourage, I get horrible, sweaty chills.

Also, note the fact that KITT appears to have been recustomized so that his steering wheel is now on the right. Perhaps a nod to his legions of intensely creepy German fans? Also, please note again that KITT is not evil, and therefore would not, in real life, have taken any part in this kidnapping (and the subsequent ejection that follows when the Hoff realizes he is not going to score).

Yarrrrr!

Here, Marita and I pretend to be pirates, with the aid of some cardboard cutouts from the side of a McDonald's Happy Meal box. I feel that Marita makes a much more convincing and menacing pirate; my pirate looks sort of smiley and constipated, all at once.


It should be noted that Diane was also present, but chose not to participate in the piratification of our lunch hour, possibly because she was not too hot on the idea of putting the nose ring in after two people had already worn it. In hindsight, this was perhaps a good idea. But I prefer to live my life on the edge, like a true pirate. Also, Marita and I very much enjoy going to Long John Silver's, so this is all starting to make sense now...

A few last random things

Obviously, I have done the triple lindy of blog badness and posted three times tonight (scroll down for more awesomeness). But since I get to post so sporadically anymore, due to my new tendency to drop into a torpor and watch much Celebreality, I figured I'd get them all out in one manic burst. So make them last!

Here are a few last things to ponder:

1. I'm coming to Wilmington over Labor Day weekend! Get your Wilmington on! There will be modge-podge and sunbathing and Arbor Mist wine. It will be glorious.

2. A few weeks ago, someone found my blog by Googling "Elizabeth Hasselbeck" and "Feet." Ew.

3. Ben and I celebrated our two-year anniversary in Pittsburgh, which we chose because it was nearby and, to quote a friend, "less of an armpit than Cleveland"*. Also, it has an Ikea, as evidenced here:

*Please note that as a resident of the Cleveland area, I do not believe it to be an armpit, so please don't write me angry comments to that effect. I didn't think Pittsburgh was an armpit, either. Having never been to Detroit, I will now designate that area an armpit.

Get your read on

I know this book is making face time all over the blogosphere, but seriously, you've got to pick up Eli Hasting's new book Falling Room, because Eli kicks ass and is very near and dear to my heart, and also because if I ever write a book, I know Eli would make his friends buy it. And while my book might suck, Eli's is actually quite rad. So buy it now!

And while you're at it, please please please go buy Joe Mackall's The Last Street Before Cleveland, which also happens to be in the exact same book series as Eli's book. Meaning I have totally eaten lunch with two authors from the same series. I feel like an American Life Series groupie!

Seriously, Joe and Eli are two of the greatest men I know-- please support them.

Why I am a narcissist (or not)

This may seem random, but hear me out:

I have a friend-- his name is Jared, most of you don't know him, but he's a great guy in an awesome band-- who once asked me why I choose to only write about myself. This is a question that has been posed to me on many occasions-- by friends, professors, people on my blog who are tired of hearing my every pissant thought.

The main reason for this is not, in actuality, narcissism-- it is because I am the only living person on the planet that I can write about without fear of backlash, or getting things wrong. I will not, for instance, refuse to speak to myself at Thanksgiving if I choose to reveal that I once sort of went to the bathroom in the back of a friend's car, nor will I freak out if I say that my favorite food is sloppy joes, when it is actually astronaut ice cream (both excellent fare, in my opinion).

I realize that, one day, I will have to write about other people if I really want to be successful; after all, David Sedaris wouldn't have gotten all that far without the Rooster, or Hugh, or the Incomplete Quad. But this prospect seriously scares the crap out of me, mainly because one day, when I was in Advanced Reporting in college, I got yelled at for about an hour by a woman I had apparently misquoted in an article I wrote for the school paper (even though I sort of had what she said on cassette tape, and specifically asked if we were on the record), and I really, really, really hate being yelled at.

But in the meantime, I think I'll stick to writing about myself. I may be my own worst critic, but at least I can't sue me. I don't think.

I stink

Every single time I smell something bad, whether it's exhaust, foot stink, or a co-worker's Poorly Prepared Salmon Covered in Burnt Onions and Green Peppers, I become absolutely convinced that the smell is coming from me. Not that the smell is on my clothes, or that I caused it by eating something I shouldn't, but that it is actually emanating from me, as if all the cells in my body decided simultaneously to begin emitting stink rays (depicted here in this highly scientific drawing I found of foot stink).

I guess I didn't realize it until recently, but I've had this problem for a really long time. I wonder if, at one point, I really did stink a lot for no reason, causing me to become sensitive to the presence of other stink-related situations? Or perhaps, when I was a baby, every time my parents farted, they blamed it on me, thus giving me a stink complex. All I know is, if something smells bad, it's probably me, even though I will always, upon first detecting a stink in the air, sniff myself vigorously and can never find conclusive proof that I am the source of the stink. Which in and of itself is a totally different problem, being caught sniffing yourself in public.

Dear Nelly Furtado,

Do you remember when you used to be a hippie, and you had those annoying hippie songs, "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn Out the Light"? And everyone was like, Ooh, Nelly Furtado, she's Portuguese and Canadian?


Well, I didn't like you then, and I certainly don't like you now that you have reinvented yourself as a shiny, stomach-baring floozy.


I am CCing VH1 on this message in the hopes that they will never play "Promiscuous" again, and perhaps burn whatever footage they may have of it, so that I will never have to watch it while getting ready in the morning (as I have taken to watching VH1 in the mornings before work to catch up on what the young people are listening to, even though MTV would be a better choice, but everyone on MTV is very angry all the time, and wearing threatening eye makeup). Also, please tell Timbaland that I don't understand why he is special, given that he is named after footwear.

Please note that your new, writhing nudie image will not work, as it did not work for Jewel, and soon "Promiscuous" will be featured in commercials for crappy razors-with-the-lather-built-in.

Also, those pants make your butt look big.

Love,
Kim

By the way...

Okay, so a bit of "felt truth" here, for my fellow memoirists-- in truth, growing up I actually loved Mama's Family, particularly the episode where Thelma had a short-lived but oh-so-hilarious stint as the receptionist at a travel agency (when asked if she knew what to do when the phone rang, she replied "No, usually whenever the phone rings I run around with my hands in the air yelling 'what'll I do, what'll I do?'"). But I decided that, of all the early eighties sitcoms I could choose from, it had the funniest name.

Pete suggested that perhaps Mr. Belvedere would have been a better choice, and I have to say I might agree. Also, I just thought of Head of the Class, where Howard Hessman taught a bunch of overacheiving nerds. But I think I may have been the only person ever in the history of mankind to watch that show in its entirety, even through the dreadful Rain Pryor years.

Honk honk!

As I am not normally one to toot my own horn-- in actuality, I spend more time thoroughly discussing every tiny thing I have ever failed horribly at in my entire life, from myspace to Letters of Feeling-- I feel that I have thoroughly earned the right to tell you that I had a column published today in the Columbus Dispatch, a real-live newspaper with many, many readers!

As you can imagine, I have done many a happy dance today.

I know many of you received this news via mass e-mail last evening (sorry about that), but for those I regretfully missed, you can read the story online here. No word yet on whether my dad is upset about being outed as a Safety Man.

Hopefully, this will lead to more to come, and Dave Barry here will be asking for my autograph, just like I did to him when I was in the eighth grade and sporting a big puffy afro and a men's XXL t-shirt (I had big style then, boy).

Big copycat seeks friends

So, partially inspired by Pen's success on myspace (see her exploits here) and Meg's debate about it (here), partially because I heard the word mentioned at least 35 times yesterday as both a proper noun and a verb ("I was myspacing, and I ran across an old ex who now skins puppies and eats their brains"), and partially because I simply cannot be left out of any major trend that will likely make it into a future social studies book (albeit in one of those side bars: "The Aughts-- What Young People Did For Fun!"), I decided to take a second look at my myspace page and spruce it up a little. Mainly because all it was before was a stick figure and a random collection of unsorted friends. And while I enjoyed being portrayed as a stick figure (check out those narrow hips and thighs!), I thought I should at least put up a picture.

But I am not having the myspace success of others. For instance, why does everyone else get a top eight, and I appear to only have a top four? I am very popular! Very! I need others to see this!

Also, there was a scary period last night in which, no matter what I did, I could not get my profile picture to come up. I acted rationally, following all instructions (myspace runs very much like an old Commodore 64 program, don't you think?), finally resorting to voodoo, only learning that the picture had, in fact, been posted hours later, upon receiving a "comment," which is a scary, ominous note that appears in your e-mail.

So anyway, I am now more suitably presented on myspace, and ready to find friends (although Alan, didn't I ask you to be my friend like seven years ago on there, and you never got back to me? Is this because I suck?). So for the love of God, friend me! I am too confused and stupid to find you myself-- I've been trying, but keep getting a weird TECHNICAL ERROR! message that makes me feel scared and ashamed of myself, as if typing in a person's name in the search function is the totally worst way you can possibly go about finding them.

By the way, I'm still sorry about the lack of frequent postings. Hopefully something hilarious will happen soon (I saw those blasphemous pierogies again at the grocery store!). In the meantime, I should share that I found the greatest thing to cut out and modge-podge onto my as-yet-non-existent journal cover, so that project is well underway.

The Dark Underbelly of Journaling

I have had a lot of inquiries as to whether my sudden new need to return to journaling means that I will cease to blog-- it may appear as though I have already ceased to blog, given the infrequency of my postings and their sudden white hot lameness-- but fear not, as this is not the case. The lack of postings is simply because not much of note has occurred to me lately, and I am in a period of oscillating between Totally Unoriginal Thought ("I think Dame Edna just might be a man!") and Entirely Too Original Thought ("Have you ever noticed that when some fireworks go off, they look like big round balls that are racing right at your head?"), neither one of which really lend themselves to blogging.

And as for the journaling, I'm still debating whether I should even go back to it. Because as Cue pointed out, there is now an actual person in my house who could read it, whereas before I was perfectly comfortable just leaving my journal out in plain view (except when I lived with Dan, and practically buried it in a pile of my own feces to keep him from getting near it). Not that I think Ben would read my journal, and not that I would write anything bad about him in it. But the fact that he could read it if he wanted to...

Also, it turns out that not all of my journals were as genius as the Letter of Feelings journal. The journal that immediately follows it, the I Wish I Were Way More Important Journal, is rather annoying. Apparently, I felt that my life had no impact on anyone else's life whatsoever, by which I mean that they did not weep and tear out their hair every time I exited a room. It does contain this eerily prescient paragraph, however, written directly before a non-fiction workshop that I feared was going to go poorly (eerily prescient, is that a Wendy-ism?):

"I'm getting really antsy and upset all the sudden. Like I know everyone will be disappointed. Oh, brilliant. Why don't I just go get a job in insurance?"

So, the point is: I am still blogging, and I may begin journaling, as soon as I can scrape together enough stuff to modge-podge onto the cover of a composition notebook, which is really the only good journal (mainly because of its ability to hold modge-podge). Also, I am glad that I am past both the Letter of Feelings portion of my life (in which I was a hilarious psycho) and the Why Aren't There More Lifesized Posters of Me Everywhere phase of my life (when I was a pathetic crybaby psycho). Now, I am just a normal person, although still hilarious, and now much better looking. And obviously, still quite modest.

Also, as an unrelated update, Ben and I are about to start our sixth week of non-smoking! Go go gadget cleanlungs!